Salmonella and Other Diseases

Yesterday, my mother walked into the living room, where I sat.

"If you're afraid to eat the eggs, that's ok," she announced. "But I just cracked two into the brownie batter and I'm eating brownies."

As she walked out, I thought very briefly about my options.

This doesn't surprise me at all. A few months ago, Tennessee was warned against eating Romaine lettuce due to E Coli. When I was 8, the news was lit up with the outbreak of Hepatitis A found in strawberries. And let's not forget Mad Cow disease. Not one of these things actually changed my mother's diet whatsoever. Be it ignorance or a joie de vivre I do not know.

In the end, true as my mother's child, I ate the brownies.

This morning I woke up early, having promised my loving boyfriend french toast. It wasn't until midway through that I remembered the salmonella outbreak. Fuck, I thought. I reasoned with myself. If I threw away the french toast, I would talk Boy into going to fast food breakfast. And since I'm never awake early anough for fast food breakfast, I can never resist one of my favorite fast food specialties, the Burger King Ham Egg and Cheese Crosson'wich. And if I'm going to get salmonella from eggs, I might as well eat 'em at home instead of hauling my lazy ass to Burger King to pay for them.

And maybe one day, I will be one of those women who throws out the three dollars of eggs at first notice.

But the fact of the matter is, 30 people die of salmonella every year in the United States. And this outbreak simply means that the number has doubled.

60 out of the 390 million people. I have a better odd of winning the lottery!

And who knows? I'm not invincible. Maybe one day I will contract some food outbroken disease. But I'll deal with it til it comes.

But until then, the odds of me enjoying my french toast are 100%.

And I like those odds.